


The Prince and the Thief

by kitkatt0430



Series: ColdFlash Week 2019 [1]
Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Alternate Source of Meta Powers, Alternate Universe - Fairy Tale, Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Barry is not a morning person, Barry wakes up with a lightning bolt pendant, Eddie is a precious cinnamon roll, F/M, Iris is a good roommate, M/M, Princess Tutu Fusion, You heard me, a pendant he was not in possession of the night before, even if she does throw pillows a lot, his day gets weirder from there, tags and characters updated as story proceeds
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-09-22
Updated: 2019-09-28
Packaged: 2020-10-26 05:28:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 9,672
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20736947
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kitkatt0430/pseuds/kitkatt0430
Summary: When mysterious power-granting pendants begin appearing all over Central City, Barry finds himself gifted with one that grants him super speed.  But the pendants appear to be tied to a mysterious man in a coma whose current location is within STAR Labs... and to a children's story about a prince and a thief.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Princess Tutu fusion story that crept up and smacked me over the head last night. Serves me right for rewatching that, I suppose.

_Once upon a time, there was a man who died._

_Before he died, this man was writing a story about a Prince and a dangerous Thief. They battled across the pages of the story with such vigor that their fight spilled out from the bindings and into the real world. To protect the town in which he now found himself, the Prince took out his own heart and shattered it… and so too did the Thief._

“_Wait a moment,” said the man who died. “That’s quite good.”_

* * *

Barry groaned and rolled over, smacking the snooze button on his alarm clock. “Just five more minutes,” he muttered.

“Nope, sorry, time to get up!” A pillow sailed through the air to smack Barry in the back of his head.

“Aww, come on,” he grumbled, twisting around to glower at the woman in the doorway. “Iris...”

“You’ve got work, Bar, and at this rate you’re going to be late. Not the impression you want to make on your first day as a CSI.” She gave him a look that said she’d be fetching another pillow if he didn’t get up.

Checking the time on his clock, Barry grimaced. Iris was right. He still needed to shower and make it to the bus stop on time. If he missed his bus, he really would be late.

“I’ve got the coffee percolating already. Go wash your hair, I’ll have a to go cup ready by the time you’re out and dressed.”

“Thanks Iris,” Barry offered her a smile despite how grumpy he felt. “You’re the best.”

“Damn right I am. Now hurry up, slow poke.” Laughing, Iris left his room and headed for their kitchen.

Scrunching up his nose in annoyance, Barry tried to think of what he’d been dreaming of before his alarm – and his roommate – had so rudely awakened him. Something about running, right?

Yeah… running. He’d been running somewhere. Towards someone important.

Giving a little shake of his head, Barry stood up and headed to his closet, grabbing the clothing he’d set aside the night before and then headed into the tiny bathroom attached to his room.

Sometimes it felt like he’d always been running, so perhaps it was no wonder he’d dreamed of it. But in the dream he’d been moving faster than he ever could awake, trying to reach someone before they…

But the shards of the dream slipped away. Whatever it had been, it must not have been very important.

Turning on the shower, Barry twisted the handles to his usual settings and undressed while the water heated up. He ducked in quickly, did a quick rinse with his shampoo and body wash, then turned the water back off, darting out of the shower and into the now seemingly chill air of the bathroom. Toweling off, he frowned as he realized there was something around his neck.

Wiping off the mirror with his towel, Barry peered at his reflection to find, hanging on a fine chain and dangling against his chest, was a yellow and red pendant in the form of a stylized lightning bolt.

Not only was Barry certain he hadn’t been wearing it before he went to sleep the night before, but Barry was sure he’d never seen the pendant before in his life.

* * *

While Barry had wanted to ask Iris about the pendant when he finished getting dressed, it wound up tucked beneath his shirt after he got dressed and after he came out of his room she shoved a to go cup of coffee in his hands while simultaneously shoving him out the door – he was lucky she let him stop for his wallet and keys – so the pendant sort of disappeared from his thoughts.

Miracle of miracles, Barry was not late for his bus so he did make it to work on time. And for the most part Barry forgot about the weird pendant from nowhere that he’d somehow managed to shower while wearing it and still nearly not notice it. But while he was filling out his paperwork and waiting for his new username and password to propagate throughout the network so he could log in to his work computer, the pendant abruptly burned against his chest.

Tugging it out from under his shirt, Barry was relieved that it wasn’t a literal burning. His skin remained unharmed. But the pendant seemed to flicker in his hands and there was a tugging sensation that Barry couldn’t entirely pinpoint, but which seemed to be pulling him towards the stairs.

So Barry got up out of his chair, wandered out of his new lab, and headed out towards the stairs to the bullpen. Looking down to the elevators below, Barry caught sight of something rather unexpected. While normally Joe dragging along some guy in cuffs wouldn’t be particularly memorable, there was an ethereal looking man in translucent blue – like a _Star Wars_ hologram almost – following them. Specifically, following the an in cuffs.

No one else seemed to notice the translucent guy, though. And he looked… familiar, almost.

_Barry was running faster than he’d ever run before – faster than humanly possible. He had to reach the man in time or else… something terrible would happen. The whole world had slowed to a crawl in comparison to Barry’s speed and yet… and yet he still despaired that he would not reach the man in the parka in time._

Barry absolutely certain the translucent man – who was definitely wearing a parka – was the same person from his half-remembered dream from the night before.

“You okay Barry?”

Barry turned and nodded absently at Eddie. “Fine. Just, you know, needed a break from all the new hire paperwork. And the network is running slow so my password still doesn’t work yet. Who’s that guy Joe just brought in, anyway?”

“Huh?” Eddie joined Barry at the stairwell and then made an irritated noise. “It was our lunch break. He was supposed to wait for me.”

“Captain Singh gonna be upset over this? Seriously, who…?”

“That’s one of the Mardon brothers.” Eddie sighed quietly. “We had a tip off that we were going to check out this afternoon. Looks like Joe just wanted to ditch me. He’s never going to trust me as his partner, is he?”

“I think its more that the Mardons killed his last partner. And, you know, the whole dating Iris thing.” Barry gave him a look, but Eddie shrugged it off.

“I’m gonna go be passive aggressive about this downstairs,” Eddie grumbled, making Barry snort in amusement. And while Barry had every intention of going back to his lab, his feet followed Eddie down the stairs.

Somehow the pendant had found its way back beneath Barry’s shirt. And it grew warmer again, buzzing against Barry’s skin the closer he got to Mardon. He tuned out Eddie’s argument with Joe – it was quickly escalating out of the passive aggressive stage and heading straight towards things those two probably didn’t actually want to discuss in front of other detectives and various arrested criminals – and tried to pretend he didn’t see the translucent man in the parka even as he attempted to sidle closer.

Mardon was quietly seething under his breath and the translucent man was murmuring in response, neither seeming totally aware of the other despite reacting to one another. Mardon was worried about protecting his little brother. The translucent parka-man was speaking of protecting his sister. Big brother instincts in display.

And there was a pendant around Mardon’s neck in the shape of a storm cloud.

The hair on the back of Barry’s neck prickled uncomfortably. He had a bad feeling about this.

* * *

Barry managed to get through the day despite the weirdness with the translucent parka-man (that only Barry could see) and Mardon. And as he was packing up to head home, things got weird again.

He knocked his coffee cup off the table and time had slowed as he rushed to rescue it. Not even a single drop of spilled coffee. Barry’d looked up to see the clock had stopped, looked out the door of his lab to see someone frozen mid-step as they walked by… and the pendant around Barry’s neck was glowing.

Barry stared at the pendant in his hands – also wondering when it went from under his shirt to on top of his shirt again – as the glow slowly faded and the noise of the world around him came back. The footsteps of the beat cop walking by to reach the upstairs bathrooms. The tick-tick-tick of the seconds hand of the clock. The soft hum of people talking by the elevators downstairs.

His bad feeling from earlier came back with a vengeance, but… what was he supposed to say? About any of this? It all sounded crazy and Barry wanted very much not to be having some sort of psychological break from reality on his first day of work.

Whatever was going on, Barry would rather like for it to stop, or at least go away.

Somehow, it didn’t occur to him to take the pendant off.

At any rate, Barry resolved to ignore it for now and, if things were still weird tomorrow, he could deal with it after a good night’s sleep.

Except as Barry headed for the elevators, that prickly feeling on the back of Barry’s neck came back. Like goosebumps during a lightning storm. And that was the only warning he got before Mardon came literally flying through the room, surrounded by a miniature storm. Barry ducked out of the way, watching in awe and horror as Mardon struck the elevator controls with lightning – hopefully anyone in the elevators were alright, there were safety breaks designed for control failures, so odds were in their favor – and then electrocuted a detective Barry didn’t know yet.

Then Mardon was disappearing down one of the elevator shafts because attacking the controls had caused all the doors to open, no elevators in sight.

And Barry felt like he was buzzing with energy, like he was…

He was running down the stairwell before he even realized it, moving at speeds that were just… utterly ludicrous, but he was doing it with ease. Barry arrived on the ground floor as Mardon was frozen coming out of an elevator shaft and just… ran towards him, ripping the pendant off of Mardon’s neck and pausing just long enough to see the storm around him begin to dissipate before rushing back upstairs to where he’d left his workbag and coffee cup.

It had barely taken him a handful of seconds to do all of that.

While everyone else freaked out over Mardon’s sudden super powers – and equally abrupt loss of those powers – Barry turned over two pendants in his hands. The lightning bolt around his neck… and the storm cloud he’d just snatched from Mardon.

Barry really hoped he hadn’t just done something very stupid.

* * *

Back at his apartment – Iris was out on a date with Eddie and she’d basically told him ‘don’t wait up’ - Barry prodded at the cloud pendant, which lay innocuously on the table.

Nothing happened. No indoor storms, no translucent parka-man muttering about his sister Lisa, nothing. Nada. Zip. Zilch.

Barry frowned at his own pendant next. But there was no glowing, no sudden speed, and, thankfully, still no translucent parka-man. (The translucent parka-man was pretty hot, but Barry wasn’t comfortable finding what was probably a hallucination to be ridiculously attractive. So he was definitely not disappointed not to see the man again. Not disappointed at all. … a little disappointed.)

On a whim, Barry grabbed his laptop and did a google search on ‘translucent blue man parka’ and got back absolutely nothing that was relevant. (Just google being passive aggressive on insisting Barry wanted ‘translucent blue men parka’ instead of just one man – apparently the search engine thought he had a craving, not a particular translucent blue man in mind – and then handed him a bunch of links to departments stores and online shops that sold blue parkas.)

Not helpful in the least.

Sighing, Barry turned to the local news sites to see if any similarly weird incidents had cropped up around town that day only to be very glad he was using his laptop and not his tablet. Because he would've dropped his tablet in shock.

_John Doe in Coma Taken to STAR Labs_

The grainy accompanying picture was of a man not wearing a parka, but that face was all too familiar. That was definitely parka-man.

Barry was out the door before he could even consider that STAR Labs probably wasn’t going to let Barry in just because he’d hallucinated their new charity case earlier that day.

* * *

The front lobby was empty when Barry walked in to STAR Labs, but the doors weren’t locked so… presumably the place was still open. Hopefully, anyway.

Except now Barry was stuck. He didn’t know who to ask to speak with even if there had been someone at the front desk. He still didn’t know how to phrase any of the day’s weirdness without sounding like he was going crazy either.

Maybe he ought to just… leave.

Barry absently reached up to touch the pendant around his neck while his other hand clutched at the storm pendant he’d taken from Mardon.

On the far side of the lobby, a door opened and Harrison Wells, CEO of STAR Labs, walked into the room.

“I was hoping you would be drawn here once we publicized the move,” Wells said, looking smugly pleased.

“I… I’m sorry? Are you talking to me?” Barry blinked hard, because… holy crap, was Harrison Wells actually talking to him? Him???

“Those pendants your holding… where’d you get them?”

“I...” Barry swallowed nervously. “I woke up with this one just… there this morning. I really don’t know where it came from. This one… this one I took off a criminal at work because he was… somehow he was using it to create a lightning storm inside the CCPD.”

“And have you been able to use your pendant for… miraculous powers?”

Barry nodded slowly. “What’s going on? That coma patient you had moved here, I swear I saw some sort of… hologram of him earlier today.”

“Not a hologram, I’m afraid. Come with me. Please.” The last word seemed awkwardly tacked on, but Barry followed Wells anyway. They wandered through the seemingly labrynthine walls of STAR Labs until they arrived at a small room, setup not unlike the average hospital room. Inside was the coma patient.

There was an odd tingling sensation in Barry’s hand – the one holding the storm pendant – and he held that hand out, palm open with the chain tangled in his fingers… and he watched in amazement as the pendant – chain and all – turned blue and then fizzled into sparkles in the air, which then reformed as the translucent parka-wearing version of the man in the bed.

“My sister depends on me,” the translucent man said quietly. “I don’t have choice in this. I have to protect her.” And then he too fizzled away, back into the sparkles, before drifting over to the comatose man and… fusing with him.

Barry’s hand went to the lightning pendant around his neck, waiting for… something similar to happen. But nothing did.

“Why didn’t...”

“It seems your pendant may have a different source. Like the one my protege, Cisco, has recently found himself in possession of. That’s how I knew you were coming, Mr. Allen. Cisco’s pendant gives him the ability to see snippets of the future. While you’re the first to arrive… I do hope you won’t be the last.”


	2. Chapter 2

_There once was a story of a thief who challenged the greatest hero of the land._

_But despite the thief's boasts and misdeeds, there beat within his breast a heart made of gold. Valuable, yet soft. For every treasure he stole from the kingdom he matched with deeds made of kindness, to children, to the elderly, to the weak and the needy... and the hero the thief challenged saw not just the thief's worst crimes, but his moments of kindness too. And when next they fought, the hero spoke of the good within the thief that shone ever so brightly, despite the thief's attempts to darken it. And the thief felt a pain within his chest._

_When the thief escaped that fight and looked within himself, he found he had stolen the hero's heart... and had his own heart stolen in turn._

* * *

Once again, Barry found himself smacking the snooze button on his alarm clock right as a pillow sailed through the room from the doorway to smack him in the face.

"Iris," Barry groaned. "Why???"

"Coffee," she chirped, dancing away from the doorway.

"A curse upon morning people," Barry muttered, dragging himself from bed and turning off his alarm clock. Then he dressed and joined Iris blearily in the kitchen, snagging a breakfast bar as he did so.

"So where were you last night?" Iris asked, sliding a cup of coffee over to him. "I got back from my date with Eddie, but you were still out."

"I, uh... I was at STAR Labs." Barry considered, for a moment, telling Iris what was going on. But it actually sounded weirder now than it had the night before. "Apparently part of my master's thesis is applicable to one of their experiments and Dr. Wells called me personally to ask me to consult on it?" He smiled weakly when Iris just stared at him. "I know, right? I think I'm still a little in shock. I mean... Dr. Harrison Wells, Iris. I spoke to him. In person."

"Holy shit," Iris breathed, excitement blooming on her face. "Bar, that's awesome. I'm so happy for you." She bounced off her seat and hugged Barry - nearly knocking him from his stool in the process. "And how was your first day as a CSI?"

"Lots of paperwork, no actual science or evidence collection. Though I'm sure I'll be doing plenty of that too, soon enough. Between my job and consulting for STAR Labs - because of course I said yes, it was Harrison Wells, Iris - I'm probably going to be pretty busy for the next while."

"Does that mean I'm on my own when it comes to getting dad to accept Eddie as my boyfriend?" Iris pouted while Barry rolled his eyes.

"Not having me there will probably actually help, Iris. I'm pretty sure he's holding out hope my high school crush on you will come back and that you'll magically fall in love with me in response. I'm also about ninety-percent sure he thought we were gonna announce we were dating after we moved in together." Barry felt amused as Iris grimaced.

"Ugh. No offense Barry, but we just... would not work."

"Not offended," he promised, drinking his coffee, "I totally agree. I'm too gay for you these days."

Iris snorted in amusement, "gay as in sworn off women after what happened with Patty but still actually bi? Or you think you might actually be gay after all?"

"Relatively bi but increasingly more interested in men then women?" Barry shrugged. "Still figuring that out I guess. So how's work going for you?"

"I've got a whole new stack of stories to edit," Iris told him, gesturing to a pile of books on their coffee table. "Have time to take a look?"

Barry glanced at his watch and then nodded. "Yeah."

They both moved to the couch and Iris showed him a few kids books - two of which already had a few red ink marks in them from her editing spree - and he nodded absently as she described the books to him. They were all the really simple chapter books - meant for kids only just starting on books with actual chapters - and sounded cute. Nothing Barry was really interested in, but Iris put up with Barry nattering on about science that she found boring all the time. It was only fair to let her chatter on about stuff he wasn't interested in sometimes too.

Except, one of the books aimed at older children caught his eye. Frowning, Barry carefully pulled it from near the bottom of Iris' pile. The title read "The Prince and The Thief" by Eobard Thawne.

On the cover was a stylized lightning bolt interlocked with a snowflake in a cloud of mist; the lightning bolt appearing again on the spine.

The lightning bolt looked like Barry's new pendant.

Flipping the book over, Barry reads, 'in a land of magic, a prince protects his people from the threat of a dangerous thief, but as a new danger descends upon the kingdom it may take the combined might of these rivals to protect the kingdom.'

"And I've lost you," Iris said, swatting Barry on the shoulder with the book in her hands.

"Sorry," he replied, giving her a rueful look. "This one caught my eye." Thumbing through it absently, he frowned when it became apparent that the final chapter was missing entirely, visibly ripped out. "Iris, look," he said, handing the book over to her.

"Aw, shoot. I'm going to have to ask for another one of the advance copies so I can edit the whole thing," she frowned. "Well, if you're that interested, why don't you hang on to that one and you can read the final chapter once I've got a second copy of it. Hopefully they'll be quick about it, since the finalized version has to be ready to hit the shelves pretty soon."

"Thanks Iris. I should probably head off to work now, though. Mind if I take this with me?" Barry asked.

"Go for it. Like I said, you can hang on to the copy. Hopefully you won't find yourself stuck on an awful cliffhanger or anything like that." Iris waved him off, so Barry grabbed his workbag and poured himself a fresh cup of coffee in his go cup and headed out to the bus stop. But that children's book with the uncannily familiar lightning bolt felt like it was burning a hole in his bag the whole way to work.

* * *

The night before, standing in STAR Labs and watching a pendant turn into the echo of a man and then fusing with the man it had resembled, Barry had felt like he'd stepped into a dream. 

Admittedly the whole day had a weird, dreamlike quality to it. The lightning bolt pendant, the storm cloud pendant, the sudden onset of super powers - which the station was still buzzing over Mardon's storm attack and trying to figure out what really happened. But then what happened at STAR Labs...

_There was an odd tingling sensation in Barry’s hand – the one holding the storm pendant – and he held that hand out, palm open with the chain tangled in his fingers… and he watched in amazement as the pendant – chain and all – turned blue and then fizzled into sparkles in the air, which then reformed as the translucent parka-wearing version of the man in the bed._

_“My sister depends on me,” the translucent man said quietly. “I don’t have choice in this. I have to protect her.” And then he too fizzled away, back into the sparkles, before drifting over to the comatose man and… fusing with him._

Not to mention meeting Wells' protege, Cisco Ramon.

_"Oh, dude, wow, this is so cool. I mean, when I started having these visions I kind of thought I was going nuts, but you're really real, aren't you?"_

Barry had a feeling he was going to get along with the mechanical engineer just fine. They'd geeked out pretty late over the pendants and the footage of what happened in John Doe's room and just generally trying to figure out what was going on with them. Why did the pendants have powers? Why could some people see them and others not? What was up with the pendant that fused with John Doe and why had it projected that image of him in a parka?

No answers yet, but considering they'd only just started investigating, that wasn't really surprising.

Cisco's pendant looked like a spreading ripple in water, but the engineer had insisted it was a stylized image of sound vibrations. Which... whatever. Barry thought his interpretation was more poetic, but he wasn't about to argue over it. 

And now there was this book. Staring at the cover on his lunch break, Barry wondered how it fit into this whole mess. Because it did, somehow. His every instinct screamed 'this is important'. Which, he may be new to his job but his professors had all been impressed with Barry's ability to Sherlock scan a crime scene - or a mock crime scene - and be two thirds of the way to solving a crime without having even processed any evidence yet. So now he had to process the 'evidence', which in this case meant reading the book. And also...

"Hey Eddie," Barry hurried to catch up with the detective. "Mind if I tag along for lunch."

"Sure. Joe was supposed to join me but he's upset with me for putting him on Singh's shit list for lying to me and deliberately leaving me behind yesterday when he went after Mardon on his own." Eddie rolled his eyes. "He screwed up but of course it's all my fault for calling him on it. Pretty sure the Captain is going to reassign us to different partners if this keeps up."

"That sucks, but Joe is being the unreasonable one here," Barry assured him. "So, where's lunch at today?"

"There's this sandwich shop in walking distance that I like, bonus is not having to worry about parking spaces."

"Sounds good to me," Barry replied enthusiastically. "Just let me grab my wallet." Heading back up to his lab, he could hear Eddie following along behind him and when Barry pulled his wallet out of his bag, he let the book he'd gotten from Iris fall out on the floor.

"What's that?" Eddie asked, curiously picking it up. "The Prince and The Thief by Eobard Thawne. Huh. Wonder if he's related to me," Eddie mused, which at least answered one of Barry's questions. If Eddie had known Eobard, he'd have said so. "It's a family name, though. It's supposed to be derived from Edward, but..." handing the book back to Barry, he asked, "where'd you find that anyway?"

"Snagged it from Iris' reading pile this morning," Barry replied. "It's missing the last chapter so she's going to have to get a new copy to complete the final editing phase, so she let me borrow it. Sounded interesting, or at least distracting enough that I wouldn't be bored on the bus to STAR Labs after work." Then he repeated his cover about doing some consulting for STAR Labs in the evenings - 'because Harrison Wells, Eddie, he's like a science superstar and I got to shake his hand yesterday, it was so cool' - and by the time Barry had finished gushing over getting to meet The Harrison Wells (and Eddie was done teasing him about being star struck) they had their sandwiches and were seated. "So if Eobard is a family name do you think maybe someone found a book your great Uncle or whatever wrote and submitted that?"

"Huh? Oh, right, your bus reading," Eddie muttered in momentary confusion. "It's possible. I mean, I think my great grandfather was named Eobard, so its something my uncle might own if great grandad really was a writer. Most of the family heirlooms seem to have gravitated to him, but he's kind of a..." Eddie's nose wrinkled in distaste. "He's a jerk and likes to hoard stuff to himself. Not really the sort to share the family history, but... if there was the promise of money involved then he'd probably go for it despite being crabby about the whole process."

"That sucks," Barry grimaced. He couldn't really imagine what it was like having a relative that was such a dick. But then... he couldn't really imagine what it was like having relatives at all.

"Still, I hope the book is good," Eddie offered with a smile. "If it is, I'll have to borrow it when you're done."

"Well, the second copy Iris gets, anyway." Barry opened the book to the end where the torn out pages are and handed it over.

"Yup, definitely have to wait for the second copy," Eddie agreed cheerfully. "I wonder how that happened."

* * *

Barry managed to read the first chapter of the book on the way to STAR Labs. It wasn't a particularly interesting start to the story, to be honest. The prince was introduced along with his long list of duties to the kingdom. He was apparently beloved by all, yada, yada, yada... and had a magical pendant that was the source of his powers, which he used to protect his kingdom - basically a city-state - from danger.

The pendant was, honestly, the only interesting part of the chapter. It was a stylized lightning bolt. And it granted the Prince the power of speed, making him so fast that he became nigh invincible, could phase through walls, and even throw lightning.

The book wound up back in Barry's bag when he reached STAR Labs, however. He knew if he brought it up, Cisco and Dr. Wells would want to read it themselves and... Barry wanted to finish it himself first. Once Iris got the second copy he could make scans of the last chapter and bring those, plus the book he had now, to the lab and see what the others thought. But for now... he wanted to keep this level of extra weirdness to himself.

Once inside the building with the temporary pass Wells had given him the night before, Barry poked his head in to check on the coma patient. He appeared unchanged from the night before, though... he looked a little less pale maybe?

"Hey," Barry said quietly, just for the comatose man to hear, "I hope we can help you wake up soon. You sounded really worried about your sister. Or at least... whatever it was in that pendant sounded worried about her." Awkwardly, Barry patted the man's shoulder and then hurried on to the main lab.

"Hey Cisco," Barry greeted brightly. "Dr. Wells." He gave a little wave, feeling like a dork, but got a sunny smile in return from Cisco and an amused look from Wells.

"Good to see you again, Barry," Cisco chirped in reply while Wells gave him a nod and a brisk, "Mr. Allen, welcome back."

"I was thinking we should test how fast you can run when tapping into the power of the pendant," Cisco was saying, bouncing on the balls of his feet. "I've been working on a way to do so all day and I came up with this," he motioned for Barry to follow him over to a small testing chamber off to the side. One of the walls was lined with a double row of cardboard boxes and in the middle of the small chamber was a treadmill. "I call it the Cosmic Treadmill."

"Why cosmic?" Barry asked, grinning despite himself.

"Mostly because it sounds cool," Cisco admitted with a laugh.

"And the boxes?"

"If you, uh, go flying off for any reason, their full of packing popcorn for cushioning."

"Are you ready to test the limits of your abilities, Mr. Allen?" Wells asked, ambling up behind the two younger scientists.

Barry nodded enthusiastically. "Lets do this."

* * *

The next several evenings passed pretty much the same way. Barry would read a chapter of the book on his way to STAR Labs after work and then he and Cisco would test one, or both, of their powers to see what they could do. They kept an ear out for someone like Clyde Mardon or themselves, but the city stayed relatively quiet.

The book, at least, got more interesting after the first chapter. The second chapter introduced a thief with dangerous, unknown powers. The city guard wasn't strong enough to face this new menace and so the Prince himself went toe to toe with the other man in a surprisingly well written fight scene. Barry was so engrossed that he'd nearly missed his stop (not that he couldn't have used his new powers to make it to STAR Labs on time anyway, but it was the principle of the thing) and the chapter had ended with the Prince glimpsing a pendant not unlike his own around the thief's neck.

A snowflake pendant, of course.

The next chapter was dedicated to the Prince researching the origin of the pendant he used to learn of their origin.

Long ago, a powerful sorcerer was dying of old age and seeking a way to pass on his powers to his descendants for their protection. Upon the moment of his death, he reached into his chest and pulled out his heart - Barry rather hoped this wasn't meant to be taken literally - and shattered it. His body slipped into a coma and died, unable to handle the shock. But the pendants were born of the shards of his heart. But it was not just his magic that lived within the pendants. It was his memories and emotions, too. Some said that when the pendants resonated with someone strongly enough, an image of the sorcerer could be seen, repeating the words of some memory from long ago. But as time passed, the memories faded until only the power within the pendants remained. 

Barry had been jittery after reading that chapter. It had been a pretty massive exposition dump and it made him wonder about what he'd seen come out of the storm pendant - that blue, transparent version of their coma patient. Was that a shard of that man's heart? A sort of... crystallized emotion? The memory of loving, and wanting to protect, his sister?

It made a terrifying sort of sense.

But if it were true, then it meant the pendant around Barry's neck was a shard of someone else's heart. He couldn't help but wonder what sort of emotion and memories were locked inside.

* * *

_Barry was running. Sometimes it felt like he was always running. Running away from his fears, running to protect the city... running to fight Len..._

_Not that they fought much anymore. Not since Lisa was freed. Now that she was counted amongst the citizens of Barry's kingdom, it was like... the fight had gone out of Len._

_Still, Len was the one Barry was running towards at the moment, phasing through the door and coming to a complete stop in a rather nice foyer. He moved to the study and knocked politely on the door._

_"You've already broken into my home, Scarlet," came Len's mocking voice from behind Barry. "You might as well invite yourself the rest of the way in."_

_Barry flushed and shivered at the tone. "Well then, don't mind if I do," Barry replied, his voice carrying more heat than he'd realized even as his legs carried him forward to press a kiss against his thief's lips._

A pillow smacked into Barry's face, however, which was incredibly weird. Wasn't he just kissing someone? He'd definitely been kissing someone. But who...?

"Wake up, Bar, or you're gonna be late for work," Iris called from the doorway. "Don't make me throw another pillow at you."

"I'm gonna complain about you to your boyfriend," Barry grumbled. "See if he's so enthusiastic about you staying the night if he knows you hit people with pillows in the morning."

"Eddie's a morning person too," Iris retorted sweetly. "Get up, coffee's on."

Barry groaned and rubbed his face. "If only I could remember what that dream was about," he muttered.


	3. Chapter 3

_There once was a young woman who fell in love with the idea of love. She feared what might happen if she let her chance at finding happiness in love pass her by._

_She began courting a young man who did not love her, only what she could do for him. But she imagined that he might change for the love of her - a love he only feigned to possess. The more he hurt her, the more she reassured herself he would change, eventually._

_But the truth was that she did not love him either, merely what he represented to her. And because she would not let him go, the possibility that she might find happiness in love grew slimmer with every passing day..._

* * *

"Holy crap," Eddie breathed out, echoing Barry's internal monologue pretty much exactly as they stared at the security camera recording.

Barry rewound it and let it play through a second time.

In the frame, a black woman in a ski-mask walked up to the front of the jewelry store. She held up a flashlight, pointed at the window, and then... poof. She was gone. Appearing inside the store on the internal security camera. Then she casually walked over to the nearest display and performed a quick and easy smash and grab. Then another poof of smoke and she was back out in front of the store, strolling away. By the time the cops arrived, alerted by an alarm that went off when she smashed the display glass, the woman was long gone. Presumably having gotten in a car that was outside the security camera's view and just... driven away.

Between the mask and her gloves, Barry couldn't imagine what sort of evidence there was for him to find. Maybe residue from the smoke she seemed to leave behind?

"This can't be accurate footage," Eddie said, transfixed as Barry re-ran it a third time.

"I'll get this sent to the computer forensics team," Barry said, pausing the playback when the internal security camera got a good look of the woman from the front. There was a glint of something reflecting off her chest that Barry suspected was a pendant of some kind. "But... I don't see any glitches that would indicate the footage was doctored. And after what happened with Mardon last week..."

Eddie grimaced, "don't remind me. That was freaky."

"Well it looks like we've got something else 'freaky' going on," Barry replied dryly.

"How is this our lives?" Eddie muttered, shaking his head.

"Magic," Barry responded dryly.

"Bad magic, maybe," Eddie grumbled. "I'm not looking forward to sharing this footage with Joe."

"How are things with him?" Barry gave Eddie a sympathetic look when the other man made a pathetic noise and buried his face in his hands. "I've been trying to stay out of this because I thought that'd help, but maybe I should go yell at him for you two instead."

"On the one hand, I don't want to impose my problems on you, but on the other hand... if you think it'd help..." Eddie peered up at Barry hopefully.

"I'll go yell at him," Barry promised in amusement. "Later. But first, you get to show this," Barry waved a hand at the footage, "to Joe."

* * *

"So," Barry said, flinging himself dramatically into the cortex at STAR Labs, "I've got a lead on one of the pendants. I don't know if its one of our coma patient's pendants or not, but definitely something weird and magical going on."

"Oh, do tell!" Cisco looked up from whatever project he was working on with a grin. Barry'd have to ask about it later.

"There was a jewelry store robbed last night and the thief could teleport." Barry grinned. "The footage of her using her powers was pretty cool. I couldn't really see the pendant well enough to identify it, but I definitely saw a glimpse of it on the store's interior cameras."

"That's good to hear. Cisco, how about you show Barry that new program of yours?" Dr. Wells strolled over, giving Cisco a proud look.

"So, its an alert system - sort of like google alerts? But instead we keep an ear out for weird happenings, like this teleporting thief. I brought it online a few hours ago, so I guess we'll see how efficient it is once the next theft occurs. With any luck, though, this'll give us a heads up while the theft is in progress and you can run out to snag her pendant." Cisco paused a beat, then added, "I'd try to vibe her, but..."

While Cisco's pendant had initially triggered with a vision - a vibe, as Cisco insistently referred to them - of Barry arriving at STAR Labs with his own pendant, all further attempts to glean visions of the pendants - whether by trying to vibe off of Barry's or through John Doe himself - had resulted in nothing but dizzy spells and migraines for the engineer. He could tell whether his bus would be on time or late and knew which restaurants to avoid for food poisoning reasons, but the pendants remained a mystery for now.

"What if you tried vibing the security footage?" Barry still thought it was a case of the pendants magic interfering with each other; maybe the coma patient's innate magic, or whatever, having a similar effect. 

At least they'd all finally gotten over their hangups about referring to what the pendants did as magic. As Wells had finally put it, 'magic is just another word for science we don't yet understand.'

"That's not a bad idea," Cisco mused. "Or maybe the store itself..."

"The store is the better option. Showing you the camera footage wouldn't exactly be legal," Barry amended.

"Fair enough," Cisco conceded. "But I'm guessing the store itself is still an active crime scene?"

"I'll need to head back tomorrow to collect some more evidence so if you meet me there for lunch..." Barry talked off leadingly.

"Then I could definitely try vibing the store then. What's the address? And, uh, would you mind if someone else joined us for lunch? It's just... my friend Ronnie has been in a funk ever since his girlfriend ghosted him a couple of weeks ago. I've been trying to cheer him up but he's taking it really hard. He was about to propose to her and then..." Cisco looked pensive, adding, "it was really out of character for Caitlin too, but she won't talk to me at all about what happened."

"Yeah, it's fine." Barry wished there was something else he could say. Being stuck in the middle of a friend's breakup always sucked.

* * *

Instead of heading straight home, Barry detoured that evening to Joe's house. Something felt weirdly unfamiliar about the neighborhood that night, but Barry brushed the sensation off as him having been away too long and how everything always looked different in the dark.

A few knocks on the door later, Barry was walking into Joe's house, welcomed with a hug and big smile and he felt like he'd come home. Until he looked at the living room and the whole setup was unfamiliar. Had the furniture always been in that configuration?

Yeah, no, Barry could remember sitting on that couch as a kid, crying over his parents deaths, Iris holding him... but had the couch been there? It had, right? Barry remembered Iris joking about how Joe never rearranged the furniture if he could help it because 'dad's terrible with change, Barry'. In fact... Iris had moved chair half a foot to the left to mess with him once...

Barry shook his head to clear it out. Whatever it was going through his head right now, it needed to clear off if Barry was going to make any impression on Joe at all when it came to Eddie and Iris' relationship.

"So we never did really talk on your first day at the CCPD," Joe was saying. "Sorry about that. Things went sort of... weird. But how are you liking the lab?"

Barry shrugged and accepted the beer Joe passed him as they settled at the breakfast table in the kitchen. "It's really nice. The skylight leaks, though, so I got to learn how to put in a maintenance request. I'm hoping its just a matter of getting the seal fixed; I'd hate to be known as the guy who shows up and makes the department buy a whole new skylight. But it's a contamination risk for the evidence being processed in there."

Joe nodded in understanding. "I'm sure that David'll make sure it gets taken care of."

"So... want to tell me why you left Eddie behind last week when you went after Mardon?" No point in beating around the bush with Joe.

Joe made a grumbling noise. "Everyone is so hung up on..."

"You broke protocol, Joe. You left your partner behind, deliberately, and went after Mardon alone. Now Eddie thinks you don't trust him to have your back on top of you being pissed off at him for dating Iris. And I've seen more of him than you this last week, which kind of makes me wonder if you've been avoiding me."

"Avoiding you? Bar, I wouldn't..."

"Chyre." Just invoking the name made Joe go silent.

Barry'd never much liked Detective Chyre. No real reason - the man just rubbed him the wrong way on a personal level. But Chyre had been a good cop and had Joe's back for years. Until the Mardon brothers got the drop on them and one of the brothers shot Chyre in the chest. The detective had died in surgery afterwards. It had, unfortunately, coincided around the time that Eddie and Iris started dating and Barry and Iris had just moved in together. The death of his partner - one of his best friends - would've been too much change for Joe at the best of times. But all this at once? And then to top it off, Eddie wound up assigned as Joe's new partner when Joe was finally cleared for active duty again.

"Joe," Barry said quietly, "talk to me. What's going on with you?"

"It wasn't..." Joe sighed and twirled his beer bottle idly between his hands. "You think I didn't bring Eddie with me because Mardon killed Chyre." Barry just arched an eyebrow and sipped at his own beer, letting Joe take his time. "I couldn't stand to see the look on Iris face if I ever had to tell her Eddie was hurt," Joe admitted after a long silence. "I screwed up, Bar. Eddie's saying it, David's saying it, Iris has been saying it, now you're saying it..."

"I think you should've kept up therapy after your mandated sessions ended," Barry told him. "And it's not necessarily a bad thing if you can't compartmentalize with Eddie and see him as your partner first at work instead of Iris' boyfriend. But that's not Eddie's fault either. And you need to make it clear to him that he's not at fault because he definitely handles anxiety like I do. Badly. But... if you can't figure out how to treat him like a partner and not a breakable glass figurine, then you need to ask for a new partner. Because right now you're hurting your career, Joe. And you might be hurting Eddie's too."

Joe scrunched his nose. "Therapy, Bar? Really?"

"This isn't a cold that you can just tough out with Nyquil and an unhealthy amount of caffeine. You went after a known murderer on your own, no backup. You were lucky that squad car was nearby when you did finally call for help because you'd have been toast and Iris would've been devastated over you, not Eddie. I don't want to be planning your funeral, Joe. I've buried parents before, don't..." Barry choked for a moment, wiping at his face. "Don't make me do it again. Not for a very, very long time, anyway. After a nice, long stay in a retirement home preferably."

"Barry," Joe reached out and grabbed his hand. "I'm sorry, son."

Wiping at his face, Barry said in a steadier tone, "so go back to therapy, Joe. We all care about you and want you to be healthy, but that decision you made to go after Mardon..."

"Wasn't a healthy decision," Joe agreed, eyes closed with a defeated expression on his face. "All right. I see about getting back into therapy in the morning."

"And stop being an ass to Eddie, okay? He loves Iris, would do pretty much anything for her, and he's a great guy. If Iris wasn't dating him, I'd probably be trying to get him on a date." Barry snickered when Joe made a grumbly noise. "The only person you've ever been okay with even so much as crushing on Iris was me, but Joe? That was never going to go anywhere. And I'm over her now; have been for a very long time and you know it. So instead of clinging to the past and making Iris miserable..."

"Give Eddie a chance?" Joe groaned. "He is a good person, I suppose."

"Nice personality, very adorable, I freely admit to being very jealous Iris got to him first," Barry teased just to see Joe go all scrunchy-faced again.

"Why couldn't you two stay cute little kids forever?" Joe muttered.

"Because then you'd miss out on so many opportunities to be proud of the people we've grown up to be?" Barry smiled innocently when Joe shook his head.

"Pretty sure children only grow up as a means to torment their parents."

"That's just bonus."

* * *

"You're home late," Iris said as Barry slipped into the apartment around eleven.

"Went to talk to Joe."

"Ah, yes, Eddie mentioned something about you promising to yell at him?" Iris looked intrigued.

Barry yawned. "No literal yelling, but I did give him a verbal kick in the butt. He's promised to start therapy back up." He then stumbled as an Iris-shaped blur collided with him for a hug.

"Ugh, finally, you are a miracle worker. I've only been hinting he needs to go back for weeks now. How'd you pull that off?"

"No hinting. Only bluntness. Joe ignores the hints he doesn't want to hear, Iris. You know that better than anyone."

She gave him a suspicious look but did not call him on the possibility that he was implying 'like father, like daughter' or anything like that. Even though he totally was.

"Go to sleep," Iris chided after a moment, when Barry yawned deeply again. "I'll see you in the morning."

"Do I get to wake up without a pillow to the face?" he asked hopefully.

"Are you going to hit the snooze button?"

"Tyrant."

* * *

Barry woke up the next morning with a pillow to the face and his hand on the snooze button, Iris laughing maniacally all the way to their coffee pot.

* * *

At noon, Barry was finishing up collecting what he suspected was residue left behind by their thief and was ready to meet with Cisco and his friend, Ronnie. Heading out from behind the crime scene tape, he waved at Cisco and they met up, very casually, just to the side of the building

When Cisco touched the wall, Barry knew the other man vibed something when he went stock still, his eyes distant. Then he sort of stumbled slightly, Barry catching his shoulder.

"Are you okay?"

"Yeah, I... I saw our teleporter, but at a different store. I think it was tonight, ten o'clock? Maybe eleven..." Cisco shook his head. "I'll tell you more later, but we should hurry if we're going to meet Ronnie."

"Right, so where'd you settle on going for lunch?"

"Little french cafe down the street. So delicious; I've actually been there once before. And, bonus, walking distance from your crime scene." Cisco looked proud of himself for the choice as he led the way down the sidewalk.

Ronnie was already there by the time they walked up and he shook Barry's hand, looking wan. Cisco took them through the polite introductions and then they settled in to decide on their orders.

Shortly after the food arrived, Ronnie said, "I saw Caitlin yesterday. During my morning jog. Wouldn't even look at me..." Ronnie fidgeted and the added, "I'm not even sure where she's staying, have you heard...?"

"I think she's crashing with that weird roommate of hers from college. Amunet something or other?" Cisco offered. "Hartley says she's been in to work every day like nothing is wrong, but he's on a different floor than her so he only sees her in the mornings 'cause they get to Mercury at the same time. Ronnie... I'm really sorry this happened, but... if she won't talk to you and she won't talk to me, then we're probably never going to know why she left. I know that's not fair, but... you need to let this go."

"I don't know if I can." Ronnie was poking at his food more than actually eating it. "But what if someone's... I don't know... threatening her? That sounds like I'm grasping at straws, doesn't it? Maybe I should just let this go, but then I start thinking of what-ifs like that and I... I just can't. She was acting so strange the day before she left, too. Muttering to herself about something not being real."

Barry's first thought was that maybe, somehow, this Caitlin's sudden about face on Ronnie was somehow related to the pendants. He didn't know enough about Ronnie - maybe he was a shitty boyfriend and Cisco was too wrapped up in being a good friend to realize that Caitlin had legitimate reasons to get the hell away from Ronnie. That sort of thing happened all the time. But it felt like too much of a coincidence. What if that 'something not real' was an image of their John Doe in a parka?

Exchanging a glance with Cisco, it seemed like the engineer was having the same thought.

* * *

At ten-forty-five that evening, the masked thief appeared in front of the New Heavens jewelry store. At the same time, Barry was lying in wait around the corner, clad in a friction resistant red suit that Cisco said was going to become the next big thing in fire safety for fire fighters to wear. It was snug - maybe too snug in certain places considering the way Cisco had turned rather crimson himself upon seeing Barry wear it. At least the engineer had made a point of keeping his eyes up instead of glancing down again after that first time.

At least it didn't chafe down there.

Anyway, Barry leaned into the power of his pendant as the ski-masked woman pointed her light at the window. It should've been simple. It should've been easy, like with Mardon. Just run up, grab whatever pendant she was wearing, and keep on down the street while she tried to figure out why her powers weren't working.

Instead he was pulled along into the teleport with her the moment his fingers brushed the chain around her neck. For a moment, Barry felt like he was surrounded by smoke. When the air cleared, they weren't outside the jewelry store anymore. But the weren't inside the the jewelry store either.

They were inside what looked like some sort of shadowed arena. Barry on one side, the woman on the other. In the middle stood a translucent version of the man in the coma. Only this wasn't an adult dressed in a parka, but a young teen with an air of desperation about him. "If I do this, if I get it right, if I'm good enough... maybe he'll finally love me."

Both Barry and the masked woman stared in shock at the translucent teen between them.

Barry recovered first, tapping into his pendant for speed again in hopes that if he could get the pendant from her, he could get them both out of... wherever this is. But the woman teleported out of his way just a split second before he'd have reached her. He tried again and again, but was always a hairs-breath too slow.

Part of the problem was that Barry was trying to avoid touching the eerie apparition in the center of the room. Swearing softly to himself, Barry went for it, barreling through the translucent image only to stumble and skid as the woman got away again. But Barry was too busy being overwhelmed by visions in his head all of a sudden.

The woman... Shawna. Lashawn "Shawna" Baez. Trapped in a relationship gone sour because she loved too much to let go...

"He won't change," Barry said quietly, looking over at Shawna. "Clay won't change. You keep bending to what he wants you to do, even now that you have the power the pendent gave you... you're still bending over backwards to please him."

"But I love him," Shawna insisted. "And he says he loves me, that he'll change. We just need the money to get out of Central..."

"He's told you that before, though. When you gave him the money that was supposed to go towards finishing your nursing career."

"How do you know that?" Shawna demanded, voice angry... broken.

"I don't know, but I think he showed me." Barry gestured to the flickering silhouette of the teenaged John Doe between them. "Clay's just going to keep taking from you, putting you in difficult positions, and actively harming you. That's not love, Shawna. You deserve so much better than that."

"When I showed him what I could do, I thought we could get out of Central using this power. But all he could talk about was the money." Shawna let out a shuddering breath. "That's all he cares about. I... I've known that for a while, but I kept hoping he would..." she sobbed and then ripped the pendant off, flinging it at Barry. "I'll never be enough to him. He's never going to love me."

Barry picked up the pendant and... they were back on the street, outside the jewelry store.

Shawna took off running down and around the corner. But Barry just stood there for a long moment, staring at the pendant in the palm of his hand. A cracked heart.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just for clarification's sake, the person young Len was talking about was his father.


End file.
